Poison Diaries: Nightshade

Thunder cracks, loud as a gunshot. I press my hand to my chest. My heart flutters like a trapped bird within the cage of my bones. My hair hangs sodden, like seaweed trailing from the ropes of a sailing ship. My dress is as wet as if I had risen up from the German Ocean and walked ashore.

“Help me,” I cry with all the ragged breath I have left. “If you are here, show yourself, I beg you. For I do not know what to believe anymore.”

I will show you.

Once more, lightning slashes crookedly across the sky, briefly revealing the path before the world plunges into darkness again. The wind howls and blows, not east to west, but in strange circles that seem as if they would pluck the trees straight up from the ground and hurl them down again like broken toys.

The black gate of the poison garden looms before me. I hurl myself at the unyielding bars. The lock taunts me, an iron apple dangling from a lifeless tree. Exhausted, I collapse to the ground.

I assure you, I am no dream, lovely. I have powers you cannot imagine. I can help you find what you seek. All you need do is ask.

Help me, my heart begs, yet I dare not speak the name of the one to whom I plead. The horrors of my nightmares come back to me ten times over: the torment. The lunatic asylum. My father’s wickedness and murderous lies.

Nothing about this world is what I thought it was. I am lost, and have only one refuge.

“Oleander!” I cry, but the wind swallows all sound. I lift myself from the mud and seize the bars of the gate in my two hands. The wet metal is cold and rough against my cheek. “Please! I need you. I need you to show me the truth… as you did once before…”

The sound of the storm changes. To each side of me rain pours, lightning cracks, wind howls. Somehow I am shielded.

I throw my head back and search the sky. Directly above me the night takes form. It is darkness upon darkness, like ink spilled upon black velvet.

The inky stain is in the shape of outspread wings.

I have waited for you to come back to me, the Prince of Poisons croons. And now you are here.

“Tell me, please,” I gasp. The shadow wings beat once, twice. “Is Weed dead or alive?”

Your beloved Crabgrass is rather unkempt at the moment. In a foul temper, and in urgent need of a bath. But yes; he is alive.

The relief I feel is mixed with the sure, sickening knowledge that my father is no more than a murderous villain.

“I must find him – does my father know where he is?”

If your father knew where to find Weed, he would have had him killed by now. He cannot harness Weed’s gifts for his own purposes, and he will not have him be a potential rival.

“He is a monster! Oleander, can you help me find Weed?”

I can if I choose to. But first you must prove yourself worthy.

“Tell me what to do.”

I want you to avenge your mother’s death. Bring justice to her killer. Then you will have earned my aid.

My heart clenches. “My mother was murdered? By whom?”

Who do you think, lovely?

His laughter falls like a rain of ice. There is no end to the wickedness of humans, is there? It surprises even me, sometimes. When your task is done, then I will help you find what you seek. And you will help me in exchange, when the time comes. For you and I need each other, as you will someday learn…

“What do you mean?” I cry, but the shadow being ascends to the vault of the night, and is gone.

The rain pours down with doubled fury. I slip and stumble along the muddy path, back to the cottage, too shocked to even weep.

My whole life has been based on lies. And the only being that can help me find Weed is an incarnation of evil itself.

Have I made a terrible mistake in rousing the dark prince? It does not matter, for I must find Weed again, whatever the price.

And, this, too I swear: No corrupt magistrate, no dim-witted committee of farmers, will stand in judgment of my mother’s killer.

No. I will deal with him – with Father – myself.

The door to the cottage opens with a push. The fire sputters as the water from my clothes streams across the stone floor and sizzles into the hearth.

“Father?” He is not here. Is he out searching for me in the storm? Has he been crushed by a tree or trapped on the far side of a flooding stream?

I hope not. For I would hate to miss the chance to take my own vengeance.

And yet, there is some small doubt within me. My father is wicked, I know. A liar and a murderer. But I always believed he loved my mother. There was a warmth in his voice, a softness in his eyes, that only ever appeared when he spoke of her.

Surely it would not be wrong to want proof, I think.

I walk toward the study, wet feet slapping against stone. The door is unlocked and swings open as I approach. Every window shutter has blown open. Gusts of wind howl through the room, lifting papers, toppling books. I can scarcely see, but who could light a candle in this maelstrom?

As if in answer, lightning flashes once more, and then again. A volume lies open on Father’s desk. Its pages tremble in the moving air, begging me to read them.

I lay a hand on the open page. As I do, the wind ceases and the night goes silent and still. In this otherworldly calm I can finally light a candle to read by. The page is written in my father’s hand, although his familiar neat script is slanted pell-mell and blotted, as if he wrote in a terrible rush, or as if his thoughts had become tinged with madness…

…my life’s work is lost, utterly lost, or so it seems. I think of all that I sacrificed to gain this knowledge, so painstakingly recorded in my diary. What compelled that misbegotten freak to seize the record of my work and flee? As if he had any need for it! Someday I will pay him back, I swear it – I will find him, wherever he hides, and reclaim what is mine.

So much suffering, for naught! So many lives sacrificed! Even yours, my darling, my Elizabeth… but how was I to know that the child in your womb would weaken you so severely? You were never the same after the birth; it was as if all your strength was used to nourish the child, at your own expense. Poor Jessamine. She scarcely remembers you. She would never suspect how I think of you hourly, write you these letters every night, and above all, continue our work…

She has grown so like you it startles me. Would you be proud to know how well she endured my treatments, Elizabeth? She suffered, yes, but survived greater doses than I ever dared give you.

It occurs to me now: Perhaps her physiology has some special tolerance for the dark substances, since she was first exposed while still in your womb… this may be a topic for further study.

Here is all the proof I need.

My father poisoned my mother. She let him do it, it seems. She was a willing part of his “work,” even as I grew within her belly. Still, he bears full blame for her death.

And my illness was no strong fever, my recovery no miracle cure wrought by the skills of Thomas Luxton. My father poisoned me, and harbours not one speck of remorse for doing so.

And Weed – Weed is alive. Somewhere. And my father will kill him someday, if he can. If I do not stop him first, that is.

Truth, terrible truth! It is like an ancient curse, from which there is no escape. The truth will drive one mad. Yet without it, how can one make sense of life’s madness?

Do you like the task I set you, lovely?

I do. For now I know who I am.